Friday

Jul 26, 2019 at 1:36 PM

TAUNTON — The Taunton Police Department has once again partnered with the nonprofit Cops for Kids with Cancer to provide a donation to a local couple whose 1-year-old daughter was born with a rare form of a childhood cancer.

Taunton residents Alicia and Eliseo Ramus said that their daughter Hannah was born with a cancer known as embryonal rhabdomyosarcoma, diagnosed after doctors found a tumor on her back — a rare case, they were told.

Hannah was officially diagnosed 10 days after she was born on November 11, 2017, according to her mother.

“They found the tumor while I was pregnant, two days before she was born. We caught it as soon as we could,” said Alicia Ramus.

“We were hoping it wasn’t cancer. We kind of knew, but didn’t want to know at the same time.”

Though Hannah is now cancer-free and the tumor has since been eliminated, her parents said that the $5,000 Cops for Kids donation has now allowed them to catch up after more than a year of having to budget around the costs related to their daughter’s treatment.

“This killed us financially. I had to stay home at first…so I had to be a nurse and a mother at the same time,” said Alicia.

“We plan to use this donation to pay down bills - MassHealth covered almost everything, but this all has still been very expensive,” said Eliseo.

Taunton Police Lt. Eric Nichols said that these are the “unseen costs” that families incur as a result of a cancer diagnosis, a burden that he said no family should have to endure.

“This is the kind of stuff that’s why most officers want to join the force — to help people and build relationships,” said Nichols.

“People out there need to know that they’re not alone and that there are always people out there willing to help.”

For more than a year-and-a-half, the Ramus family has become familiar with the long trips to Dana Farber’s Jimmy Fund Clinic and Boston Children’s Hospital, where for over a year Hannah received chemotherapy and underwent scans.

Due to the fact that the tumor was so close to Hannah’s spine, her parents remember that doctors at Dana Farber wanted to try to reduce its size as much as possible before they tried to remove it surgically.

Ten days after she was born, the newest member of the Ramus family underwent her first round of chemotherapy on the same day that she was diagnosed.

“It would have gotten bigger and harder to remove if we waited because it was so close to her spine. That’s what the chemo was for,” said Eliseo.

At 11 and 13 months, Hannah had strokes that doctors determined were caused by a hole in her heart, formed as a result of her treatment at such a young age.

Doctors performed a surgery after her second stroke to repair the hole and another shortly afterward in March to remove the remaining parts of the tumor, which by then had shrunk significantly as a result of the chemotherapy.

Now almost 2-years-old and cancer-free, Hannah will be visiting Boston Children’s next month to undergo scans, the first of many throughout her life, necessary due to an increased risk of developing new cancers, her father said.

“It’s a scary thing, and she’s such a strong girl and we have faith it will all turn out for the best,” he said.

For the time being, Hannah will receive scans every three months and over time will visit less frequently, on a yearly basis.

“She’s doing so good (now). She’s had an amazing personality, and you would never have known that she was living with cancer. We’re blessed that Hannah’s happy.”

After her upcoming round of scans, including one in her birthday month of November, Hannah’s next destination will be Orlando, Florida, for a trip to Disney World paid for through the nonprofit Emmy’s Wish – which grants wishes to children diagnosed with cancer under the age of 2-and-a-half.

“That was her wish, but she’s too young for Make-a-Wish,” she said.

“I think that we need to be talking about childhood cancer more because it’s a sad reality for many families…I didn’t really think about the subject until right before she was born, and now it’s a part of my life.”

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